Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ Trailer

They’ve finally released the trailer for Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic story, and Anderson’s first full foray into stop-motion animation. Previously, his film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou featured a bit of stop-motion work.

Anyway, I just watched the trailer and I have to say that I’m not blown away by it. This isn’t that great of a trailer, though I will never hang a movie from the gallows based on a bad trailer. But it does make me wonder: If a viewer goes into this cold, without knowing much of Anderson’s work, what would they think? At any rate, you can see some “Anderson trademarks” displayed in this film. I’ll talk about them after you watch the trailer:

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Looks kinda funny, huh? While I am not the biggest fan of George Clooney, I think he does well here as the title character. I like the look of the animation and while there’s a slightly larger amount of “jerkiness” to the stop-motion work than more recent stop-motion movies, it still looks pretty good. This film really brings me back to those movies and TV specials I used to watch as a kid in the late 1970s and 1980s.

So, the Anderson trademarks that I could see: the “side shots” as the animals dig (we saw a lot of this in Life Aquatic in the submarine), and you have a “loner” kid who probably has some issues (voiced by Jason Schwartzman who may very well be channeling Max Fisher from Rushmore, one of my all-time favorite movies). I didn’t see any other definitive trademarks, but if you’re a Wes Anderson fan please list them in the comments.